Healthy forests play an crucial role in Earth’s ecosystem as growing trees take up carbon from the atmosphere. NASA satellites and airborne missions study forests to see how carbon moves through ecosystems – and now citizen scientists can help investigate this key question as well by using their smartphone to measure tree height.
Here are 10 things to know about ICESat-2
NASA’s Ice, Cloud and land Elevation Satellite-2 (ICESat-2) arrived at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California on Tuesday, June 12, three months before its scheduled launch on United Launch Alliance’s final Delta II rocket. After launch, slated for Sept. 12, 2018, ICESat-2 will use a laser instrument to measure the height of Earth’s surface in unprecedented detail.
In August 2015, a NASA instrument flew over Greenland and the Arctic ocean to study how green laser light interacts with snow and ice.
